Eriastrum densifolium (giant woollystar)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Eriastrum densifolium, photographed by Heather Dawnstar Sabin — fig. a Heather Dawnstar Sabin, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-30 / obs. 203394016

Eriastrum densifolium, photographed by Adam J. Searcy — fig. b Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201745168

Eriastrum densifolium, photographed by Jeff Lahr — fig. c Jeff Lahr, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200363302

Eriastrum densifolium, photographed by James M. Maley — fig. d James M. Maley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200134660

Eriastrum densifolium, photographed by Millie Basden — fig. e Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193394523

Eriastrum densifolium, photographed by Daniel S. — fig. f Daniel S., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162190966

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 2 botanical countries

Native distribution of Eriastrum densifolium, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
California	CAL	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Northwest	MXN

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 406 in flower of 423 examined

55%

95%

99%

100%

90%

94%

100%

Proportion of examined Eriastrum densifolium in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	1	1	too few examined
Feb	0	1	too few examined
Mar	0	1	too few examined
Apr	11	20	55%	34% to 74%
May	39	41	95%	84% to 99%
Jun	135	136	99%	96% to 100%
Jul	138	138	100%	97% to 100%
Aug	31	31	100%	89% to 100%
Sep	19	21	90%	71% to 97%
Oct	16	17	94%	73% to 99%
Nov	10	10	100%	72% to 100%
Dec	6	6	100%	61% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Eriastrum densifolium observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 406 of 423 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,569 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-4.1 °C	0.6 °C	8.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	23.1 °C	30.1 °C	35.7 °C
Annual rainfall	180 mm	415 mm	613 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	4 mm	14 mm	32 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,569 research-grade observations of Eriastrum densifolium that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 26 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Eriastrum densifolium var. austromontanum (T.T.Craig) Hoover
Eriastrum densifolium var. elongatum (Benth.) Hoover
Eriastrum densifolium var. patens Hoover
Gilia densiflora (Benth.) Peterm.
Gilia densifolia (Benth.) Endl.
Gilia densifolia var. austromontana T.T.Craig
Gilia densifolia var. elongata (Benth.) Macbride
Gilia densifolia var. mohavensis T.T.Craig
Gilia densifolia var. sanctora Milliken
Gilia elongata (Benth.) Steud.
Gilia hugelia Steud.
Gilia lanata (Lindl.) Walp.
Hugelia densifolia Benth.
Hugelia densifolia subsp. austromontana (T.T.Craig) Ewan
Hugelia densifolia var. austromontana (T.T.Craig) Jeps.
Hugelia densifolia var. mohavensis (T.T.Craig) Jeps.
Hugelia densifolia var. sanctora (Milliken) Jeps.
Hugelia elongata Benth.
Hugelia lanata Lindl.
Leptosiphon densiflorus Benth.
Linanthus densiflorus Milliken
Navarretia densifolia Kuntze
Navarretia densifolia subsp. elongata Brand
Navarretia densifolia subsp. eu-densifolia Brand

and 2 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.